I recently finished Lean In and, while much of it did not apply to me, there were a few nuggets that I did enjoy. In light of the #YesAllWomen conversation on Twitter last month, I’m sharing this excerpt:

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to go through life without being labeled by my gender. I don’t wake up thinking, What am I going to do today as Facebook’s female COO?, but that’s often how I’m referred to by others. When people talk about a female pilot, a female engineer, or a female race car driver, the word “female” implies a bit of surprise. Men in the professional world are rarely seen through this same gender lens. A Google search for “Facebook’s male CEO” returns this message: “No results found.”

As Gloria Steinem observed, “Whoever has power takes over the noun–and the norm–while the less powerful get an adjective.” Since no one wants to be perceived as less powerful, a lot of women reject the gender identification and insist, “I don’t see myself as a woman; I see myself as a novelist/athlete/professional/fill-in-the-blank.” They are right to do so. No one wants to see her achievements modified. We all just want to be the noun. Yet the world has a way of reminding women that they are women, and girls that they are girls.

One of my favorite things in 2011 was the book club that I participated in – until that book club fell apart and I moved abroad…so in late 2012 I started another one. We had quite the year.

1. World War Z / Max Brooks: I’m surprised by how much I liked this zombie book
2. Batgirl Vol. 1 / Gail Simone: ❤
3. The Crimson Petal & the White / Michel Faber: Great for discussion as long as you don’t go with the reader’s guide questions (“Describe how Faber exemplifies & perfects postmodern literature”)
4. Minor Characters / Joyce Johnson: Making me proud of my choice to not read the Beats
5. Terrier / Tamora Pierce: I’ll never look at pigeons the same way again
6. How to be a Woman / Caitlin Moran: Excellent for people who don’t think they’re feminists (*spoiler alert*: you probably are)

Tonight is international book club! This month we read Terrier, the first book in the Beka Cooper series by Tamora Pierce. Among other things, it had a very cool system of magic that will keep me from looking at pigeons in the same way ever again.